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After years of isolation from the world, Myanmar began officially re-engaging with the international community in 2011, as the country started to move towards democracy. In the years since, interest in philanthropy to the country has risen sharply among international donors – corporations, foundations, and individuals alike.
Despite being named one of Asia's fastest-growing economies in 2017, the country still has many challenges to overcome. Poverty, an education system that is out of sync with the current demands of the country, a weakened healthcare system and ethnic conflict are among its many challenges.
Myanmar is ranked 145 out of 188 countries and territories in UNDP's Human Development Index 2015. The mean years of schooling is less than five years. According to a 2017 Asian Development Bank report, 26% of the population lives below the national poverty line and four out of every 100 babies born in Myanmar die before their first birthday. Ethnic violence against the minority Rohingya community has also been in international news for most of this past year.
Against this backdrop, Asia Philanthropy Circle (APC) is pleased to launch the first of several cross border giving guides to increase the impact of philanthropic giving in Asia. Interviews were conducted with philanthropists, civic leaders, and other stakeholders from Singapore, the US, and Myanmar to best capture the issues and trends on the ground.

Every year, disasters and humanitarian crises affect millions of people globally. This report analyzes disaster-related funding in 2016 from foundations, bilateral and multilateral donors, the U.S. federal government, corporations, and smaller donors who gave through donor-advised funds and online platforms.

This report examines the current state of philanthropic activity in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. While there is a growing body of research on Central Asia's non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the development of the so-called 'third sector', little formal research is available on the culture and practice of philanthropy and charity in the region. The existing literature demonstrates that charitable activities in these countries take a number of forms, ranging from smallscale volunteer initiatives to nationwide campaigns supported by the private sector.

This project examines the development of American humanitarianism in the era of the world wars. It explores how, in the absence of state power, private citizens often filled the void. Their activities expand the common definition of diplomacy by noting myriad ways private organizations and individuals, including the Rockefeller Foundation and its partners, attempted to influence the direction of American foreign relations. The primary argument here is to demonstrate that American citizens, who grew frustrated at the lack of government involvement in world affairs during the first-half of the twentieth century, sought to insert themselves into positions of power and influence. This project shows that, in the absence of the state, many American individuals and NGOs formed partnerships and coordinated their humanitarian activities on a global scale. In specific ways, they undertook the roles and strategies of foreign policy professionals: stationing professionals in foreign offices, raising and appropriating large sums of money, providing food and medicine, coordinating the mass migration of refugees, and negotiating with foreign governments. By doing so, they acted as "shadow diplomats" – working as a shadow government in opposition to the recognized state authority, but also working in the shadows, away from most public attention and scrutiny, because they reasoned that quiet actions would produce the desired results.

On 1 August 2018, the Ministry of Health in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) declared a new Ebola epidemic in Beni territory, North Kivu. It was the first time that Ebola had struck in an area of chronic insecurity and humanitarian crisis. A large-scale response to the outbreak, including health workers on the ground, volunteers in communities, and those working to coordinate the response, has had a clear impact on the spread of the virus. The challenge for DRC and its international partners is not only to rapidly control the deadly Ebola, but to do so in a way that contributes to protecting communities in this vulnerable environment.
In the next phase of the response, there is a need to rebuild trust and engagement with communities, alongside the essential medical response. A stronger and more independent role for NGOs would also better support scale-up and reinforce quality. These briefings track some of the issues faced by the response to the outbreak: the complexity of the context, the role of communities, and new directions for the response.
Briefing 1: DRC: The world's first Ebola outbreak inside a conflict
Briefing 2: Strengthening the Ebola Response in Beni, DRC by Putting Communities at the Centre
Briefing 3: Crucial Course Corrections for the Ebola Response in Beni, DRC

Safe sanitation is essential for health, from preventing infection to improving and maintaining mental and social well-being.
Developed in accordance with the processes set out in the WHO Handbook for Guideline Development, these guidelines provide comprehensive advice on maximizing the health impact of sanitation interventions. The guidelines summarize the evidence on the links between sanitation and health, provide evidence-informed recommendations, and offer guidance for international, national and local sanitation policies and programme actions. The guidelines also articulate and support the role of health authorities in sanitation policy and programming to help ensure that health risks are identified and managed effectively.
The audience for the guidelines is national and local authorities responsible for the safety of sanitation systems and services, including policy makers, planners, implementers within and outside the health sector and those responsible for the development, implementation and monitoring of sanitation standards and regulations.

The Saudi and UAE-led Coalition has intensified its assault towards Hudaydah's city and port, with devastating consequences for civilians. If fighting continues and the main roads out of the city are blocked, hundreds of thousands of people could be trapped in Hudaydah without access to adequate food, water and medical care. All sides in the conflict are causing harm to civilians -- for example, airstrikes are damaging water infrastructure, which has undermined water supplies to about 58,000 families.
This urgent briefing adds new evidence -- from Oxfam's interviews with civilians on the ground -- to the warnings that the UN and others have already made. There must be an immediate cessation of all fighting, and a turn towards an inclusive peace process, engaging Yemen's women, youth and civil society.

This paper is part of an ongoing collaboration between the World Bank and the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization to raise awareness about the importance of water management in fragile systems and to propose strategic responses. It is important to better understand these dynamics to ensure that water does not add to fragility, but rather promotes stability, and contributes to resilience in the region. This paper calls for redoubling efforts towards sustainable and efficient management of water resources, reliable and affordable delivery of water services to all and protection from water-related catastrophes.

In 2017, Elrha's Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) launched a Challenge 'to understand how to design, implement, and evaluate approaches to user-centred sanitation that incorporate rapid community engagement and are appropriate for the first stage of rapid-onset emergencies' (defined as the first twelve weeks post crisis). A component of this Challenge involved undertaking a landscape review of existing community engagement practice and approaches that could be used to provide a background resource for Challenge participants. The review was carried out by Oxfam, the HIF's Research and Evaluation Partner for the project. It draws on published and grey literature and interviews with 15 key informants.

The State of Global Grantmaking Giving by U.S. Foundations is the latest report in a decades-long collaboration between Foundation Center and The Council on Foundations and aims to help funders and civil society organizations better navigate the giving landscape as they work to effect change around the world. The analysis reveals that global giving by U.S. foundations increased by 29% from 2011 to 2015, reaching an all-time high of $9.3 billion in 2015. In addition to a detailed analysis of trends by issue area, geographic region, population group, and donor strategy, this analysis also relates these trends to key events and developments, including the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals, the spread of Ebola in West Africa, and the increasing legal restrictions faced by civil society in countries around the world.

Since August 2017, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees have fled Myanmar for camps in the Cox';s Bazar district of Bangladesh. The research for this report was conducted to identify the needs, vulnerabilities, risks and concerns of Rohingya refugee and host community women, girls, men and boys in Cox';s Bazar, as well as the skills and opportunities on which they can build. The analysis shows various gaps in the humanitarian response for both communities, especially in terms of accountability, communication with affected communities and disaster preparedness, but also in equitable access to services, in particular for women and girls, and especially for the Rohingya community. The report presents a range of recommendations for agencies responding to the crisis, including on water, sanitation and hygiene; menstrual hygiene management; food security and nutrition; livelihoods; gender-based violence; community and household power structures; women';s and girls'; leadership; unpaid care work; coping strategies; and community cohesion, among others.
The research was led by Oxfam in partnership with Action Against Hunger and Save the Children, and produced with analysis, comments and recommendations from CARE, UNHCR, the Inter Sector Coordination Group and UN Women.